When Charlie Kirk Was Made a Martyr in Dimapur

Poster of Charlie Kirk spotted at Nyamo Lotha Road, Dimapur

The Hoarding on Nyamo Lotha Road

Nearly two weeks after the conservative American activist Charlie Kirk was assassinated on September 10, 2025, a “Rest in Peace” hoarding appeared on Nyamo Lotha Road in Dimapur. It was swiftly removed by unidentified miscreants the next morning, only to be re-installed that same evening.  Crucially, the hoarding bore the biblical verse from Matthew 25:23: “Well done, good and faithful servant.” In Nagaland, a state defined by its Christian faith, this wasn't just a memorial—it was a statement connecting a Utah campus shooting to a Dimapur road, revealing a dangerous political strain taking root in our soil.

“The Lungleng Show” a YouTube talk show hosted by R. Lungleng that explores politics, social issues, and entrepreneurship amplified this message, criticizing church leaders as "chickenhearted" for not expressing regret or praying for Kirk's family. The host in this show cast Kirk as a “Christian martyr”deserving reverence, celebrating his transformation of Turning Point USA from a $50,000 startup to a $100 million organization. The Nagaland Post editorial “Poison of Liberalism” published on the 20th of September condemned American liberalism following Kirk's assassination and openly supported the suspension of late night show TV host Jimmy Kimmel by the American Broadcasting Company (ABC) an American television network that is owned by The Walt Disney Company.

But neither Mr Lungleng nor the Nagaland Post editorial told us what Charlie Kirk actually stood for—or how his politics contradict the very verse displayed in Dimapur.

The Prosperity Gospel and Exclusion

Mr Lungleng attributed Kirk's success to faith and dedication, presenting him as a self-made man. This narrative reflects what's called the “prosperity gospel”—a strand of Christianity that, according to Dr. Anthea Butler, Chair of Religious Studies at the University of Pennsylvania, preaches that God's favor manifests in material wealth and success. This "faith-based capitalism" spiritually justifies wealth accumulation, mixing Christianity with capitalism where financial prosperity becomes both sign and reward of faith. It explains Donald Trump's religious backing: his wealth supposedly proves he's “God's man on earth.”

Consider what this version of Christianity produces: Four men—Musk, Ellison, Bezos, and Zuckerberg—are collectively worth over $1.3 trillion. Musk alone owns more than the bottom 52% of American households. Meanwhile, 800 Americans die daily from poverty, over 200,000 annually from policies causing violence among the poor. What kind of “faithfulness” are we celebrating?

From America First to Nagaland First

The admiration for Kirk translated directly into uncritically supporting his exclusionary politics by Mr. Lungleng. Kirk famously declared America “does not need more visas for people from India”—"enough already, we are full.” Mr. Lungleng seemed to mirror this anxiety regarding the status of immigrants: "I would do the same thing for my own country," arguing Nagas must oppose immigration that could make indigenous people minorities.

Dr. Butler explains Christian nationalism—Kirk's ideology—is inherently exclusionary. It asserts America was founded for “Christians only” and is inseparably bound to race and “white men in leadership,” actually undermining longstanding indigenous self-determination movements among the Native American people in the United States. 

Christian nationalism emphasizes “law and God” over Jesus's teachings like the Golden Rule: “Do to others as you would have them do to you” (Luke 6:31, also reflected in Matthew 7:12). Bishop William Barber calls Christian nationalism “heresy by another name.” True religion requires crying out against oppression; Christian nationalism promotes policies that “prey on the very communities” faith should protect. Kirk wasn't just influenced by this movement—he led it through Turning Point USA. When killed, his death became a weapon.

Weaponizing Martyrdom

Political assassinations are not new in the relative young history of the United States. Before the Kirk assassination the most recent was the murder of Melissa Hortman, Speaker of the Minnesota House, on June 14, 2005—killed in her home alongside her husband by a Trump supporter—is one such example. Unlike the Kirk assassination, which received massive media and public attention, the Hortmans' killing has largely been overlooked. A Department of Justice study found that far-right extremists—the same ideology behind the Hortmans' murder—have carried out more ideologically motivated homicides since 1990 than leftist or Islamist extremists. This study was reportedly removed after Kirk's death, because the study's facts did not align with the narrative that President Trump and Stephen Miller were attempting to promote.

But as Pulitzer Prize-winner Chris Hedges in his piece “The Martyrdom of Charlie Kirk,” explains, what matters is how death gets used. Martyrs become “the lifeblood of violent movements.” Once elevated, “any talk of compassion or understanding”, to give up violent means justified by the killing of the martyr becomes a betrayal of the cause. Trump's top advisor Stephen Miller declared Kirk's “last message” was the need to “dismantle radical left organizations.” Miller vowed using every Department of Justice and Homeland Security resource to "destroy these networks.”

Hedges warned that creating a “Christian martyr” could accelerate a shift toward a police state—and within days, that prediction seemed to come true. When Jimmy Kimmel mocked Trump's bizarre response to Kirk's death—boasting about a ballroom rather than expressing grief—Brendan Carr, head of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), the U.S. agency regulating radio, TV, wire, satellite, and cable communications, threatened media companies with consequences “the easy way or the hard way” regarding their licenses. ABC subsequently suspended Kimmel for six days.

The Nagaland Post editorial participated in this crackdown, using Kimmel's suspension to claim liberalism descended to "contempt masquerading as cleverness.” It framed Kirk as standing for “conservative principles” and criticism as “silencing an inconvenient voice,” arguing America had "lost its soul.” But the editorial concealed Kirk's actual record. He wasn't a “free speech martyr”—he called for deporting generations of legal immigrants, called the Civil Rights Act a “huge mistake,” and disparaged immigrant cultures like eating with one's hands as “Third World behavior.” By whitewashing this record, the editorial made exclusionary politics seem noble.

Defending American Values

The editorial justified supporting Trump as defending against “liberal decadence”—abortion, gender ideology, open borders, contempt for religion—calling it "an assault on American identity."

While attacking Hollywood for tolerating “sexual predators like Harvey Weinstein,” it ignored Trump's documented association with Jeffrey Epstein, whom Trump praised in 2002 as a “terrific guy” and noting Epstein liked “beautiful women as much as I do, and many of them are on the younger side.”

The editorial frames Trump's authoritarianism—censorship, coercion, dismantling democratic norms—as necessary resistance. But these are fascist methods undermining democracy itself. Analyst Robert Reich argues Trump embodies fascism's defining elements. He rejects democracy ("I alone can fix it"), promotes exclusionary nationalism based on "superior race," encourages scapegoating "others," and imposes male dominance through opposing LGBTQ+ rights.

The Nagaland Post editorial attributes the “poison” and “hollowness” of liberalism to a recent cultural onslaught—specifically the “so-called progressive agenda” encompassing “abortion on demand, radical gender ideology, open borders, contempt for religion, and hostility toward tradition”. The editorial sees this “decay” as a symptom of how low American liberalism has “sunk”. 

Historians such as Pulitzer Prize–winner Steven Hahn, however, take a different view. In his book Illiberal America, Hahn offers a contrasting perspective that challenges the editorial's position. He contends that American political life is not a straightforward liberal narrative but a “contested terrain”. Hahn's primary argument is that American liberalism has always been "entangled with illiberal practices” throughout its history as a nation born in 1776.

Examples cited by Hahn include slavery, racial segregation (Jim Crow Laws), voter suppression, the ethnic cleansing of native peoples, and the embrace of Eugenics by Progressives during the early 20th century. Hahn emphasizes that the narrative of a strong “liberal tradition” was essentially an “invention” emphasized during the 1940s and 1950s amidst the Cold War to stress American exceptionalism that is the belief belief that the United States is unique and has a special mission to lead or guide the world.

Therefore, the current erosion of norms is not a violation of a firmly established liberalism, but rather the resurfacing of illiberal undercurrents that have always persisted

What Does Faithfulness Really Mean?

The verse Matthew 25:23—“Well done, good and faithful servant”— on the hoarding at Nyamo Lotha Road comes from Jesus's Parable of the Talents, teaching about faithfulness and responsibility in God's kingdom. The parable teaches using God's gifts—skills, resources, compassion, kindness—so they grow and benefit others. These gifts multiply when shared; ignoring them wastes God's work. Most importantly, it emphasizes serving the needy as serving Christ Himself. 

Helping the poor, the sick, and the persecuted is the truest expression of faith—standing in stark contrast to prosperity gospel Christianity, with its focus on material opulence and the systematic exclusion of the marginalized. As a Christian state, we must recognize how this offshoot of Christianity patronized by wealthy billionaires in the West is being weaponized for political gains. Importing political victimhood narratives risks hijacking our own local debates. We must also avoid conflating America's immigration battles with Nagaland's context. While migration poses challenges especially with the advent of artificial intelligence(AI) and growing levels of unemployment globally, our circumstances are different.

The Path Forward

Tyler Robinson, the 22-year-old accused of Kirk's assassination, surrendered after a manhunt with his family's assistance. When Kimmel returned on September 23 after suspension, he expressed deep regret: “It was never my intention to make light of the murder of a young man. I don't think there's anything funny about it.” He clarified targeting political exploitation of tragedy, not specific groups. Kimmel also offered condolences to Kirk's widow, Erika, praising her forgiving her husband's alleged killer as a “selfless act of grace” everyone should follow.

The Kirk hoarding on Nyamo Lotha Road asked us to honor a “good and faithful servant.” Erika Kirk's compassion in unimaginable tragedy embodies Christianity's true path. Being Christian isn't easy salvation—it's choosing grace and kindness over narrow material gains and preying ideologies in challenging moments. Her forgiveness embodies the parable's true meaning—using God's gifts of compassion even in darkness. Her response is the faithful servant's path Jesus teaches.

At a time when authoritarian regimes worldwide are rising and the divide between wealthy and working people has never been greater, faith has become a political tool for unchecked power and oppression. The BJP-led government has mastered this tactic better than anyone through its Hindutva ideology, while in America, Christian nationalism serves similar ends. These movements manufacture lies to mobilize people for sectarian agendas that are fundamentally in conflict with the faiths they claim to represent. But what makes them truly dangerous isn't the hypocrisy—it's their cold blooded intolerance and punitive measures to silence diverse opinions that question their pseudo-religious claims.

The Charlie Kirk hoarding in Dimapur shows how easily these imported ideologies can take root in our soil. As Nagaland navigates its own challenges—immigration, unemployment, corruption, inequality—we must resist the temptation to adopt these exclusionary narratives that promise simple solutions through targeting “others.” True faith calls us to solidarity with the marginalized and the poor, not their persecution. It demands we question power, not sanctify it. This choice lies before us.